In order to prevent the leakage of confidential information to the public, many companies prohibit the printing, transmission, or storage of data having the confidential information. In one example, there is the technology for generating a confidential document by adding a pattern to an original image, which is used to control the output of the confidential document. In another example, there is the technology for generating a confidential document by adding a pattern such as a deterrent pattern to an original image, which is to be made visible to the human eye when the confidential document is copied.
The above-described technology may be performed by a confidential document generating system. For most cases, the setting information, which determines how the pattern is added to the original image, may be set either by a user who instructs the confidential document generating system to generate a confidential document, or by an administrator who manages how the confidential document should be generated by the confidential document generating system. When there are more than one type of setting information available for determining how the pattern is added, the confidential document generating system needs to determine which one of the setting information to be used to avoid the conflict among the different types of setting information.
Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2006-74093 describes an image forming apparatus, which selects one of the setting information set by the user and the setting information set by the administrator according to a predetermined rule. For example, in order to improve the confidentiality, the setting information set by the administrator may be used when the setting information set by the user does not provide the confidentiality level sufficiently high enough to satisfy the requirement set by the administrator.